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Alfred Grosser (1925 - 2024)
Photo:
Thomas Coex / AFP
The German-French historian and political scientist Alfred Grosser is dead. He died at the age of 99, his family confirmed to the AFP news agency on Thursday.
Grosser, who was born in Frankfurt am Main and comes from a Jewish family, emigrated to France with his family in 1933 as a child. He studied political science and German and taught at the Institut d'études politiques in Paris from the 1950s.
He later wrote for a number of publications. His articles and essays repeatedly dealt with German-French topics. With his contributions he also had a lasting influence on current political events. He is considered one of the pioneers of the Élysée Treaty, with which German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and French President Charles de Gaulle sealed the close cooperation between the two countries that were enemies in the Second World War in 1963.
Grosser was awarded, among other things, the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade (1975), the Theodor Heuss Prize (2013) and the Henri Nannen Prize (2014).
In recent decades he has positioned himself primarily as a controversial critic of Israel. He repeatedly sharply criticized the attitude of German governments towards Israel, which he found to be too uncritical of Israel's dealings with the Palestinians.
A speech by Grosser at a commemoration of the pogrom night in Frankfurt's Paulskirche threatened to become a scandal in 2010. Members of the Central Council of Jews had threatened to leave the room if Grosser became “abusive toward Israel.” The scandal then fell apart and the Central Council remained in the room. Nevertheless, Grosser called for the "recognition of the suffering of others" and specified what he meant by this: One must - also from the Jewish side - show a minimum of genuine compassion "for the great suffering in Gaza."
cbu/dpa